


After All, It's Christmas

by Katie_Flint



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azkaban, Christmas, F/M, Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28325832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katie_Flint/pseuds/Katie_Flint
Summary: Above the garland, the stockings, and the Christmas cards there’s a broken wand mounted to the wall. It's a conversation piece, a trophy, a reminder of all that Katie’s won, and all that she’s lost.
Relationships: Katie Bell/Marcus Flint
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	After All, It's Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RosevalleyNB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosevalleyNB/gifts).



> It's been a heck of a long time since I managed to bring myself to make something, particularly for these two. As I wrote it I thought a lot about one of my favorite people I've shared a love for this pairing with and I thought it only fitting to gift it to her. I hope she can forgive its rusty qualities and slightly melancholic tones. A very merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays!

Above the garland, the stockings, and the Christmas cards there’s a broken wand mounted to the wall. It's a conversation piece, a trophy, a reminder of all that Katie’s won, and all that she’s lost.

  
If asked, she’ll proudly pronounce her role in the war, her part in the final battle, and she’ll end it on a triumphant note. After all, who comes to a war hero looking for sad and sorrowful things?

It’s when Katie’s alone in her flat, looking up above the garland and the Christmas cards, that she cries over that mounted prize of hers. She hasn’t got grand and exciting war stories-- she’s got one lonely tale of a boy who’s made almost all the wrong choices and a girl who helped him make the one right choice that broke them apart.

  
Katie never tells anyone this of course... After all, who comes to a war hero looking for ill-fated love and wretched endings?  
Instead, Katie sits alone in her dismally vacant flat, contemplating how he must be, alone in his dreary cell. And she thanks Merlin that at least she can drink to forget.

  
Forget how he stood above her, wand pointed down at her. How he poised to strike her with an unforgivable curse, to punish her like the enemy she was.

  
Things would be easier if that was all there was to it - another Death Eater attacking Hogwarts, another pureblood looking to spill her muggleborn blood across the cobblestone. That she could understand, that she could accept; it’s what comes after that Katie wishes she didn’t have to remember. It's not the pain of a curse Katie drinks to forget. No, what she remembers next is something far worse...

  
Marcus Flint, with an ashy complexion and a melancholy sneer, pulls back his wand with a snarl, breaking the wood in twain before her. He casts the pieces about Katie like discarded matches, disposable and bothersome. Something in him breaks with the snap of the wand, and Marcus succumbs to the broken feeling, falling heavily beside her.

  
At first Katie fears a wayward hex has struck him, but it's the resolve of his conviction which cripples him. In sparing her, Marcus pronounces himself a casualty of a battle not yet decided, because for him; it's already over. If his side were to win, the Dark Lord would have slain him for his defiance, and if Katie’s side won, well… This one act would do little to wash away the inky stain on his forearm.

  
He’s already lost.

  
As the battle rages around them, magic clashing and piercing noises breaking through the smouldering wreckage, neither choose to leave the ground they’ve fallen on. Katie searches Marcus’ gaze and is met with a hooded and ghoulish look, a haunted resolve wallowing in the depths. She screams for him to run, pleads with him to listen, begs him to get up again - but nothing it seems, can move him from where he’s fallen.

  
This is the memory Katie carries with her… the definitive moment in which Katie knows, she’s broken him-- the man she loves-- irrevocably.

  
When the Ministry comes to collect Marcus, they presume Katie’s cast a hex on him, and in some way she feels she has… She loved him, and her love, it destroyed him. Katie doesn’t object when they take him away, she doesn’t attend his inquisition, and she certainly doesn’t visit him in Azkaban…

  
After all, who wants to hear about the love of a silly girl and the sacrifice of a foolish young boy?

  
~

  
Marcus knows Christmas is coming.

  
It's one of the few things the aurors will talk about. They’re careful of course, not to mention their families or their names, not that Marcus cares much for that sort of thing. He’s not looking for revenge, only perhaps a reprieve from the boredom of the stone walls which encase him.

  
Christmas is something new to reminisce on at least. There’s not much Marcus hasn’t thought about on these endless, dreary days. And much of the memories he has now seem like little more than a dream...

  
Memories spent baking with his mother-- stealing finger-fulls of batter when she wasn’t looking, of hanging animated ornaments on the tree in the foyer-- dropping one when it leapt from his hands eagerly toward the tree, of Christmas crackers exploding with a tug from his wee hands...

  
Perhaps they aren’t all happy memories, Marcus muses, but these are the ones that bring him the greatest cheer; and he tries desperately to cling to them. After all, the unhappy ones are pacing at the corners of his mind, biding their time… And Marcus has nothing if not that.

  
Marcus chuckles to himself as the more unpleasant thoughts begin to bubble. He’s known the fiery brunette since she was eleven and in all the years they’d known each other… Not one holiday. Not as enemies, not even as… Whatever is is that they are… or were, he muses with a strong tinge in his heart…

  
It would be easiest to accept that perhaps they weren’t meant to be. That whatever this torrid affair was throughout his school years was little more than a fancy, but try as Marcus might, his mind won’t let the memory of her rest.

  
He doesn’t know if Katie thinks about him often, or at all, but thoughts of Katie are frequent and insentient. Marcus remembers her smile, the bright shine of her eyes, and the wailing screams of her despair when he surrendered himself to the inevitable.

  
To see Katie again would be to believe in the impossible, but Marcus has heard tales of things far stranger than that before. After all, Katie managed to fall in love with someone like him once… And that, he muses, constitutes as something of a miracle in and of itself.

  
Outside his cell, Marcus notes the rain has frozen and heavy white speckles are beginning to fall in their stead. It’s not the white Christmas he remembers, but it's better than nothing at all he supposes.

  
Smirking soundlessly to himself, Marcus tightens his hold around himself and imagines all the things he might like to give to Katie one day. He can see her sat on the floor of a loft, surrounded by presents he’s selected, and he can see the smile that lights up her face as she opens each of them.

  
It’s little more than a fantasy of course, but Marcus would argue that it’s all he might have left…

  
"Merry Christmas, Bell…" He hears himself whispering to the empty room.

  
~

Well after the bottle is empty, Katie finds herself draped over the arm of her couch, watching the lights dimly flickering against the wall. They’re a comfort, in their own way, and their dance allows her bleary vision to follow them without strain.

  
There’s little left for her here in the living room, but she remains there anyhow, knowing full well the grip of sleep will soon claim her. Eyelids heavy with alcohol and a weary constitution, her gaze shifts as it always does to the inevitable.

  
That blasted wand.

He’ll never know how she thinks of him, how she refuses to move on from him, and maybe it's for the best. Marcus would undoubtedly be cross to find her pining over him, but Katie can’t help it all the same. After all, she’s just another war hero caught up in the fantasy of the past...

It’s hardly louder than a hushed whisper, but she voices it all the same, “Merry Christmas, Flint...”

**Author's Note:**

> It's been over a year since this story came into my head and while it's not exactly shaped up the way I wanted it to, I think its good to try to complete things again. Please tell em what you think. Perhaps I'll revisit it again some day, but I hope you could enjoy it for what it was this go round. Again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!! ❤️🎄❄️🎅💚


End file.
